This summer, I worked with Community Legal Services’ (CLS) Youth Justice Project (YJP) under the supervision of Temple Law alum Tracie Johnson LAW ’18. YJP works with young people across the range of legal needs they experience. This allowed me to learn about and work on a variety of issues, from helping clients get probation fees waived to researching the legal standard for “recklessness.” What made the work particularly impactful was getting to help clients solve their individual legal problems while also working towards structural change to address the injustices at the heart of those needs.
One of my main assignments was representing a client in a hearing to determine whether they could continue to receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits. This allowed me to put crucial lawyering skills such as client interviewing, analyzing records, case strategy, and oral advocacy into practice. However, this work went beyond addressing one client’s needs. I also assisted with a roundtable that allowed community organizations who help people apply for SSI benefits to share their experiences directly with congresspeople and their staff. We relayed the challenges our clients faced in applying for and accessing needed benefits, and recommended changes that would make those processes easier.
Additionally, YJP had noticed that many of our SSI clients had been pushed into remote schooling environments. While some preferred that format, many were not receiving the types of support they should have been and struggled. This observation sparked a research project where I examined how remote schooling has impacted students with disabilities. After compiling my findings, we met with Philadelphia’s Education Law Center to discuss how we could put that information into action to help our clients. I then drafted a letter for the Social Security Administration that summarized my findings and shared recommendations for how they could better accommodate young SSI applicants who have not been attending school in-person. It was encouraging to see that my research would not just sit in a folder but was being used to advocate for administrative changes that could help more young people like our clients access needed benefits.
Another important part of my work was helping clients eliminate barriers to employment. I worked with youth to expunge their previous interactions with the criminal justice system or wrongful placement on Pennsylvania’s child abuse registry. At the same time we were filing petitions and appeals, CLS was working towards making those actions unnecessary, as they advocated for more automatic expungements of old records, and challenged the constitutionality of placing someone on the ChildLine registry before they have an opportunity to defend themselves at a hearing. I also learned about how Pennsylvania’s regulations make it nearly impossible to get licensed as a natural hair braider for the African immigrant women who compose the majority of the profession in Philadelphia. I researched the issue and helped write a brief for a constitutional challenge of needlessly restrictive occupation licensing laws that could protect one client’s livelihood while opening opportunities for more hair braiders.
While I had worked on public policy research and advocacy before law school, interning with CLS revealed new ways to understand and use those tools. It brought the impact of policies off of spreadsheets or statutes and into practice through the lives of our clients. For example, laws preventing employers from discriminating against job applicants based on certain previous criminal offenses is not particularly helpful if individuals struggle to understand their rights and navigate the process of winning a complaint if they do face discrimination. I gained a deeper appreciation for the importance of designing and implementing policies in a way that makes them accessible to disadvantaged communities and avoids unintended consequences. My experiences also clarified the powerful role the law plays both in remedying and reinforcing injustices.
It has been gratifying to see how the different facets of my work reinforced each other. The policy and advocacy work was guided by the experiences and goals of our clients, and was aimed at not only helping their situations, but also preventing others in the community from experiencing similar harms. I am grateful to have learned from Tracie and everyone else at CLS this summer. It was a great experience to work with them towards making positive change at the individual and systemic levels while developing skills that have prepared me to be a more effective public interest lawyer in the future.
Author Steven Jessen-Howard LAW ’23 and Tracie Johnson LAW ’18 at an expungement clinic
